Hailed by Civil War historians as an indispensable key to understanding the Southern perspective, with rare insight into the conflict from the point of view of a Confederate army enlisted man, this vivid memoir was lost for decades until it resurfaced in the Library of Congress. Private William Fletcher spares none of the horror, courage, or absurdity of war as he recounts fighting at Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chancellorsville, and Chickamauga; being wounded several times; and escaping from a moving Union prison train before the South's surrender.

"The current edition presents unvarnished images of hard marches, short rations and battles in which being wounded could prove worse than being killed. Fletcher describes the horrors of being a Civil War casualty as vividly as any firsthand account from either side. The author emerges from these pages as fighting less for a cause than for his own pride in being a good soldier. His narrative does more than many learned monographs to explain the Confederacy's long endurance against overwhelming odds."—Publishers Weekly